Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani along with other GCC Foreign Ministers and Turkish ministers in Riyadh.
Riyadh: Turkey’s foreign minister and his Arab counterparts in the Gulf yesterday condemned “indiscriminate” air strikes on Syria’s Aleppo and expressed “deep regret” at the UN’s inability to stop the raids.
The concerns came in a statement closing a meeting in the Saudi capital between Ankara’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and his GCC counterparts.
Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani participated in the fifth joint ministerial meeting for strategic dialogue between GCC and Turkey, which took place yesterday at the GCC general secretariat in Riyadh.
It stressed the depth of GCC ties with Turkey and reviewed means of boosting relations between the two sides in implementation of the mutual working plan between them.
“Ministers condemned the escalation of military operations in Aleppo by the regime and its supporters through indiscriminate air raids against the civilian population and infrastructure,” the GCC-Turkey communique said.
Ministers expressed concern about the use of “sectarian militia forces” as part of an imminent Iraqi operation to retake that country’s Mosul city from the Islamic State group jihadists. The foreign ministers along with Cavusoglu, are to join US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the Swiss city of Lausanne tomorrow for the latest diplomatic push to settle the conflict.
